A Brief History of Pink Floyd

The first 1,000 people to use the link or my code thebeatgoeson will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: A brief documentary about the band Led Zeppelin. Produced and written by Matt Beat. Check out @pinkfloyd’s music: New Pink Floyd song for Ukraine relief: Sources/further reading: #:~:text=Sigma 6 went through a,Set and eventually Pink Floyd. Creative commons credits: Steve Livesley #thebeatgoeson #pinkfloyd #behindthemusic 0:00 Sponsor 0:57 Formation and Early Years 2:44 Syd Barrett Era 9:23 Roger Waters Era 24:03 David Gilmour Era 28:00 Legacy London, 1963 Roger Waters and Nick Mason meet while studying architecture at what is now known as the University of Westminster. Eventually, they both joined a band called Sigma 6, although at one point the band was called the Meggadeaths and they eventually settled on the name The Tea Set. Waters played lead guitar and Mason played drums. There was also Keith Noble, Clive Metcalfe, and another fellow architecture student named Richard Wright who played keyboard. For lack of a better word, The Tea Set was a standard rock band that specialized in R&B covers. However, soon Noble and Metcalfe left the band, and others took their place. There was Bob Klose, who played lead guitar after Waters shifted to bass guitar. Klose introduced Waters to Chris Dennis, who became their new lead singer. Meanwhile, Syd Barrett, a childhood friend of Waters, also joined up with them playing guitar. In December 1964, they recorded for the first time at a studio that one of Wright’s friends let them use. In early 1965, the Royal Air Force assigned Dennis to Bahrain, so Barrett stepped in to become the band’s new singer. A few months later, they became the resident band at the Countdown Club in London. Each night into the wee hours they played three 90-minute sets. This was when their songs got longer with more solos and they, dare I say, got more experimental with their sound. In the summer, after pressure from his parents and teachers, Klose quit the band to focus on his studies, and Barrett also took over lead guitar. After going through various more name changes, by the end of 1965 the four of them- Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright- were now billing themselves Pink Floyd. The name came from the combined names of two American blues musicians Barrett loved, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Pink Floyd played lots of gigs throughout 1966, and even started to get paid for them! Led by Barrett, their sound was a weird mix of rock, blues, and even music hall. Ultimately, their sound distinctly became known as psychedelic, meaning music influenced by psychedelic drugs…hallucinogenic drugs that created weird states of consciousness. Barrett, in particular, became a regular user of LSD, and that heavily influenced the band’s music. The author Lewis Carroll also heavily influenced Barrett’s lyrics.